Lughnasa or Lammas is the summers height and celebration of the grain harvest when the corn Mother or Grain mother was honoured. After all the grain was brought in and stacked this was the time for honouring the harvest and for celebration. On Lammas eve fires were lit on sacred mounds representing the pregnant belly of the earth like silbury hill in Avebury. The corn mother was honoured as she gives birth to her harvest child the grain. Within this is the seed that provides the next years’ harvest and sustains life throughout the winter months. Lammas eve was a time of honouring the grain mother and the cauldron of regeneration. August 2nd is a traditional date although fairs and feasts lasted for a month 15 days before and 15 days after. Once all the grain had been collected and stored away the feasting began.
Lammas is a festival celebrating the first fruits of harvest, the fruits of our labours, and seeing the desires that we had at the start of the year unfold so rituals are centred around this. Lammas is an early Christian festival, "lammas" means loaf mass and represented the first loaves baked from that years crop. These were taken to church and laid on the altar.
The power of the sun goes into the grain as it ripens. It is then harvested and made into the first new bread of the season. This is the Saxon hlaef-masse or loaf-mass, now lammas. Seed grain is also saved for planting for next year's crop, so the sun god may be seen to rise again in Spring with the new green shoots, as the sun also rises in the sky. There are many traditions and customs all over the country that are still carried on at harvest-time today.
At Lammas we begin to assimilate and gather our own harvest. We look at the seeds we incubated in the winter and now begin to look at the first fruits of our labours. It is a period of assessment on the inner levels as well as viewing our manifestations on the outer levels as we move into the Autumn months.